Jeff Dunn

If you’ve been avoiding “modern” music like the plague, you may not realize that fashion has brought new music back into audience-pleasing land. One of the more attractive young exponents of this trend is Kenji Bunch, the Oregon-born, multistylistic composer whose Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra brings back the glory days of melody.

Chamber concertos and vocal works distinguish BluePrint’s program, inviting cross-comparisons and rewards for the ear.

It’s about time for the American composer’s symphonies to be heard again, and the Seattle Symphony under Gerard Schwarz does him honor.

Let’s hear it for “More power to the cello!” The L.A. Philharmonic and its dynamic director arrive in town with Johannes Moser his plugged in instrument.

If you’ve been dying to hear Shostakovich, his Symphony No. 14 is the one for you

At the helm of the San Francisco Symphony, with Joshua Bell as soloist, conductor Vasily Petrenko delivers on his program, but only half-way.

A revered San Francisco institution inhabits the Difficult Music Zone, with works new and really old, but all of them challenging to ear and mind.

A cantata of fen and flood by Patrick Hadley puts one by Ralph Vaughan Williams in the shade.

The New Century Chamber Orchestra began their 20th with a fascinating program of works exploiting antecedent musical styles. It made for a mesmerizing evening showcasing the ensemble’s commitment, technique, synchrony, passion, and sheer joy of music-making.

It has been 20 years since one of the best-regarded modern cello concertos has been played here. And it took the same wizard, Yo-Yo Ma, who played it then to show us now how to do it right; matched by MTT and the S.F. Symphony for quality in a spectacular evening of all-German repertoire.